Successful projects begin with sound solutions

Whenever I head a project I try to keep user focused. Users may be internal or external to the organization. External users include the general public visiting a web site to learn, research, or complete a transaction. Internal users include the emplo

Tennis Ball Ghosts

My Halloween lights, pumpkins, and spider webs are cool and all, but my favorite decoration would be the tennis ball ghosts I made several years back. They are so simple, kid friendly, and cute. If you have an old tennis ball and an old white dish to

Your site is not special

I recently read an article in Newsweek (no longer available) in which the writer, David McCullough, as a high school commencement speaker, told the graduates they were not special. Now, in context, he meant that they were no more important than every

Time Capsule for 2042 Occupants

There was enough room for my son and a time capsule. When installing our flag around Memorial Day I found out our porch pillar was hollow, could fit our 5-year-old son inside, and was perfect for a time capsule. It took a while to research materials

Show feature devotion after release

One thing that frustrates me the most about some platforms is that so much work goes into providing features, adding to the marketable feature list, but after the release there is no carry through on improvement. There is no iteration. The feature se

Verbally Walk Through User Steps

Often when I am working with a designer or vendor I have to put myself in the user’s position and ask myself, “is this simple?” Engineers and designers have the unique ability to be with a project from the ground up. They have spent hours (hopefully)

User experience when iterating quickly

Here's a good user experience quote from a UserTesting.com article " 7 Facebook Usability Mistakes That Drives Users Crazy, Part III" when talking about Facebook search and the new chat feature: Move fast and break things works well when you are a s

Think like a human, not a computer

In movies, when computers think for us it leads to disaster (think Global Thermal Nuclear War). We often believe putting computers in charge of all of our data is the answer as they can process information quickly, filter out what we don't want and l